Dayworld Breakup – Philip Jose Farmer

Having found the truth behind Dayworld’s complex governance, Jefferson Caird and Panthea Snick risk themselves to make the information public and change Dayworld forever.

Review:

As with Dayworld Rebel, there’s not a great amount of logic to this book. Farmer doesn’t worry much about cause, effect, and logical outcomes. Instead, he simply posits a situation, inhabits it for a while, and then tells us that he’s moved on.

The series has had an ongoing focus on its protagonist’s mental state and powers, and in reading the series, it’s evident that Farmer is making it up as he goes along. In this last book of the trilogy, it’s clear that he’s decided to double down on Caird’s multiple personas and his special abilities. Unfortunately, none of those issues is particularly interesting, and while Farmer sets out a number of threads, he doesn’t follow them to the end, leaving us with even more of a muddle than we had at the start. While more focused than book 1, and less frenzied than book 2, this third book is unfortunately the dullest of the bunch.